New Delhi, July 16 : Thank
your stars, that’s just a life-sized portrait of Mary Kom. You would
have been seeing stars if it were the Manipuri boxer in real life.

And, that’s Jayanta Talukdar who’s aiming the arrow just behind you.

The arrow will
never leave the bow of the archer from Assam but, starting tomorrow, a
campaign will take off to highlight the Northeast’s achievements as part
of an elaborate national integration drive.

The campaign,
initially in the form of huge hoardings, comes at a time India’s Olympic
squad, which includes 10 participants from the region, is gearing for
the London Games, scheduled to begin later this month.

Starting with
Delhi, huge hoardings with photographs of the athletes will be put up in
cities like Calcutta, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.
Incidentally, the London Olympics was where Talimeren Ao, an Ao Naga,
had led the Indian football team 64 years ago in the 1948 Games.

At home, Ao played for Calcutta club Mohun Bagan.

The campaign will, however, not end with the Olympics.

Over the next four
to six months, the integration drive will focus on heroes from the
Northeast in the fields of culture, music and science and technology.
Among stalwarts from the region was the late Bhupen Hazarika, who
enriched Indian music, while the Shillong Chamber Choir performed for
Barack Obama when the US President visited India in November 2010.

“We hit upon the
idea when some creative people were discussing the arrest of young
people from the Northeast during a Tibetan protest,” said Mayank Jha of
Delhi-based agency Basics Concept and Marketing that has handled
campaigns for the Northeast earlier.

At the root of the
campaign is the general lack of awareness about the region and a debate
on discrimination against people based on physical appearances.

The campaign’s
strength lies, perhaps, in avoiding the term Northeast, a tag absent
from all the taglines. Yet, it is obvious because the five personalities
inside each of the Olympic symbol’s five circles — which represent the
five participating continents — on the hoardings come from Northeast
states like Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.

These are faces
that have inspired youths not just in their own states but across India.
“We wish all the best to India’s best,” says one tagline.

Another line —
“Pride of India Inspiring India” — reflects what Indians feel when they
see archer Chekrovolu Swuro (Nagaland) hit the bulls eye or Mary Kom
(Manipur) punch the living daylights out of her stunned opponents.

While Mary is
practising hard in Pune before her departure for London next week, her
students in Imphal are also balling up their fists, straining every
nerve and muscle to prove themselves. “We have a tournament going on at
the academy,” her husband Onler Kom told The Telegraph from her boxing academy in Imphal.

The month-long
national hoarding campaign in three phases will have photographs of five
Olympians from the Northeast to begin with. Some of the 135 hoardings
to be put up in the national capital are huge — one of them 12ft by
80ft. Some 100 hoardings are likely to be put up in Calcutta, sources
said, while a huge one will greet passengers arriving at Indira Gandhi
International Airport in Delhi. The hoardings will remain for about a
week.

In the second
phase, of about 10 days, pictures of other better-known heroes like
Olympic gold medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra will intersperse
photographs of those from the Northeast. The third phase will depend on
performances at the Games.

The 80-odd Indian
contingent includes 10 men and women from the Northeast. They include
archers Talukdar (Assam), Tarundeep Rai (Sikkim) and L. Bombayala Devi
(Manipur), boxers Mary Kom, L. Devendro Singh (Manipur) and Shiva Thapa
(Assam), weightlifter Soniya Chanu (Manipur) and tennis player Somdev
Devvarman, who has roots in Tripura.